In Memoriam 1916 – 2009

“Walter’s career curve and the curve of network television absolutely dovetailed. And, and he held that position for so long under such vastly changing circumstances … that it seemed to most people that as they got their first television set, Walter and CBS NEWS had joined their family.”

– Historian and journalist David Halberstam

He was the man who told us that President Kennedy had been shot, the man who told us that we had put a man on the moon, and the man who told us that we couldn’t win the war in Vietnam. During the 20 years he anchored the evening news on CBS, Walter Cronkite became a daily presence in the American home. Building on the legacy of Edward R. Murrow, he brought CBS to the pinnacle of prestige and popularity in television news. And when he left CBS, both began to ebb away.

Walter Cronkite’s life and his work followed a simple, consistent line. At the age of 12, he read about a foreign correspondent in BOY’S LIFE and decided that was what he wanted to be. It was a modest aspiration, the only career goal he ever had, and he achieved it by becoming the first important news anchor on American television. That achievement and the everyday work it involved made him happy, and he had the innate good sense not to be arrogant about it. Indeed, his modesty and his dedication were the reasons his wide audience liked him so much — and trusted him.

It isn’t enough to say that he was the “most trusted man in America,” as determined by a 1972 Oliver Quayle poll. In fact, in a many-headed questionnaire, he beat the president and vice-president of the United States, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Democratic candidate for the presidency (Senator George McGovern), and all other journalists. And this accolade came at the height of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. In those years of anger and division, Americans simply believed that Walter Cronkite would not knowingly deceive them.

Cronkite — born in Missouri but raised in Texas — got his training as a journalist with the United Press wire service. He had had other jobs before it, with small newspapers and small radio stations. But the UP was his spiritual home and would remain so, in large part, for the rest of his life. There he learned to get the facts accurate, write them simply, and get them on the wire quickly.

In December 1941, right after Pearl Harbor, he signed up as a war correspondent, got his uniform, and headed for Europe on the U.S.S. TEXAS. He covered the air war against Germany from England and the Allied invasion of North Africa from the deck of a ship bombarding the Moroccan coast. When Cronkite returned to New York after the invasion, Paramount put him in a newsreel reporting on the North African campaign. Even then, he was good at it. Sincere, straight, no curlicues.

Edward R. Murrow was following his career and liked what he saw: a hard-working young wire service reporter who’d go anywhere and do anything for a story — even ride a bomber or a glider into combat. But Cronkite turned down the legendary CBS newsman and the prospect of a glamorous career in radio to stay with the workaday United Press. Years later, after the war, after Cronkite had covered the Battle of the Bulge, the end of the war, the Nuremberg trials, and the beginnings of the Cold War from Moscow, Murrow again offered him a job, this time on television. This time, Cronkite took it.

It was, according to historian David Halberstam, “one of those things that really worked. Right man. Right place. Right time. Right instrument.” Television was an unknown, but it was growing. It needed gravity, a tone, a voice, and Cronkite gave it all three. Because nobody really knew what television could do at the beginning, Cronkite was in a position to make it up as he went along and to establish the strict news standards of print journalism. His reports on the 1952 Democratic and Republican conventions were masterpieces of analysis, suspense, and story-telling.

“It’s interesting about the camera. You either have IT on television or not. It’s a kind of chemistry,” said journalist and colleague Bill Moyers. “The camera either sees you as part of the environment or it rejects you as an alien body. And Walter had IT, whatever IT was.” Cronkite could go on the air live and talk about what was happening without a script or notes, never repeating himself, always adding a little more information, filling time between events, coordinating the coverage of roving reporters on the convention floor. By the time the 1956 conventions began, Cronkite was as well-known as the men he was covering.

His early fame got a huge boost from a popular program peculiar to the early days of television: YOU ARE THERE. Each week a team of CBS correspondents — headed by Cronkite — would “report” on a critical historic event: the death of Julius Caesar, the Louisiana Purchase, the Salem witch trials, or the trial of Galileo. Reporters would “interview” Sigmund Freud while he was analyzing a patient or Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. Every show would end with the same, soon-to-be-familiar refrain from Cronkite: “What kind of a day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there.”

The director of the series was the young Sidney Lumet, who would go on to create such award-winning feature firms as TWELVE ANGRY MEN, NETWORK, SERPICO, and DOG DAY AFTERNOON. He chose Cronkite for the role of anchorman “because the premise of the show was so silly, was so outrageous, that we needed somebody with the most American, homespun, warm ease about him.”

The same qualities got him the job as anchor of the CBS EVENING NEWS in 1961. At the time, the broadcast — like the news broadcasts of the other networks — was just 15 minutes long. But Cronkite wanted the networks to be responsible citizens, to take the news more seriously, to devote more time and more funds to news — whether that commitment made them a profit or not. He also wanted the title of Managing Editor so that the staff and the audience would know that the news judgment on the program was his.

By 1963 he had the title and the longer broadcast. Cronkite inaugurated the new, longer format with a feature with President John F. Kennedy in September 1963. Two months later, Cronkite broke into the broadcast of the soap opera AS THE WORLD TURNS to announce that the president had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Sitting behind the news desk in his shirt-sleeves with his glasses on, Cronkite continually updated the story. On a videotape of that historic broadcast, occasionally a hand can be seen pushing a wire service report, a photograph, or a correspondent’s report into Cronkite’s hand.

Throughout the morning, he calmly filled in the story, squelched any information that hadn’t been verified, reduced speculation to certainty — until he was handed a dispatch confirming that the President of the United States was indeed dead. He pulled off his glasses, looked to the clock to repeat the time, and seemed to subdue a sudden wave of emotion, before he continued with the broadcast.

The assassination was on a Friday. All of America watched this event together. Whether in California, Nebraska, or Mississippi, the entire nation was seeing the same thing — for three days. Saturday, Sunday, Monday … the networks ran nothing but coverage of the president’s death, the return of his body to Washington, the funeral procession to the Capitol, and the final journey of President Kennedy to his burial in Arlington National Cemetery. There were no commercials for those three days. By today’s standards, the coverage was simple and sedate. No emotion was added to the trauma of loss, nor was any needed.

It was a show of dignity that America never forgot. And, as a result, Americans awarded Cronkite the honor of allowing him to give us the bad news about our world as well as the good. This messenger was not condemned when he reported that America’s deeply racist history had to change. And he was not punished in the ratings when he went to Vietnam and reported that he had seen the lies, corruption, and stalemate in that war and that it was time for us to go.

President Lyndon Johnson listened to Cronkite’s verdict with dismay and real sadness. As he famously remarked to an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.” After all, this was not one of the young, brash reporters like Morley Safer or Jack Laurence pricking the president’s power. It was Cronkite, veteran of World War II, a man of unimpeachable patriotism. When he stated the obvious — that the Viet Cong had no intention of giving up, and we had no intention of remaining in Vietnam for another generation — the common sense of it stuck with the public.

For more than a year, Johnson had been losing popularity due to the war that he could neither win nor end. But when he announced his decision not to run for re-election, just about everyone put it down to the influence and power of Cronkite. His integrity and clear judgment gave him tremendous authority, remarkably, with the old and the young, the conservative and the liberal. He transcended all those divisions. As Senior PBS Correspondent Robert MacNeil observed, “Cronkite came to be the sort of the personification of his era and became kind of the media figure of his time. Very few people in history, except maybe political and military leaders, are the embodiment of their time, and Cronkite seemed to be.”

Cronkite could report with disgust the Chicago police attacks on anti-war demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention. And he could report with unalloyed delight the landing of a man on the moon. He could withstand the attacks of Vice President Spiro Agnew against the so-called “nattering nabobs of negativism” of the press by speaking eloquently not only of “freedom of the press” but also, as he emphasized, of “the important right of the people to know what their government is doing in their name.” And to prove that he meant it, Cronkite picked up the WASHINGTON POST’s early article on the “Watergate Caper” and made the story national news with a two-part feature on the EVENING NEWS in the fall of 1972, just a month before the election.

A furious White House threatened to punish CBS by revoking its station licenses. But CBS stuck by its story and watched as Nixon self-destructed over the next two years. Cronkite reported with quiet admiration the thoughtful proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee on the Impeachment of President Nixon. And he reported Nixon’s resignation with sadness. There was no gloating, nor hard feelings. He was a professional doing his job, which he never doubted was serving the public.

There was no one, it was said, that he couldn’t get on the telephone. And in 1977, he got new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to agree to an interview. In his autobiography, Cronkite described the hot afternoon on the banks of the Nile: “The interview was as tepid as the afternoon was hot. Sadat droned on about his hopes and plans for Egypt’s future as I fought to stay awake. Suddenly he brought me bolt upright. I was sure that I had heard him say he intended to go to Jerusalem. Yes, he assured me, he would go to Jerusalem.” Sadat was the first Middle Eastern leader to make any such gesture toward peace. Cronkite set up phone calls between Cairo and Jerusalem and flew with Sadat to his historic meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

When Cronkite resigned in 1981, his audience didn’t really believe it — or want to believe it. It was, wrote a commentator in THE NEW REPUBLIC, “like George Washington leaving the dollar bill.” There were so many requests for interviews and photographs of the departing Cronkite that eventually all were denied. On the final broadcast, he assured his audience that while they would be seeing less of him, he would not be disappearing.

This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of the CBS EVENING NEWS. For me it’s a moment for which I long have planned but which nevertheless comes with some sadness. … This is but a transition, a passing of the baton. A great broadcaster and gentleman, Doug Edwards, preceded me in this job and another, Dan Rather, will follow. … Furthermore, I am not even going away. I’ll be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries. … Old anchormen, you see, don’t fade away, they just keep coming back for more. And that’s the way it is, Friday, March 6, 1981. I’ll be away on assignment and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. Good night.

But Cronkite was on the air less and less. “Walter was a tough act to follow,” CBS colleague Mike Wallace said, “and when Dan Rather started to take over the EVENING NEWS, he didn’t want Walter sitting there. I think, candidly, he just didn’t want Walter being the wise man looking over his shoulder. And I think that disappointed Walter.”

Though he was off the air, he was not silent. “There comes a time,” says journalist Bill Moyers, “when, having covered the world for all of your life, you want to reach and state the conclusions to which your life’s experience has led you.” And, freed from the restraints of objectivity, Cronkite has done and still does just that. The war on drugs, he said, succeeded only at putting young people in prison. Global warming is a fact, he said, and, regardless of the cost, the entire world should support the Kyoto treaty. It is not only immoral to kill one another in wars, he said, “even the matter of defense expenditures is immoral. To spend that much money … in building more refined systems of murder is not a civilized consideration.” “In the wake of 9/11, the desire for revenge against Islamic fundamentalists is both understandable — and dangerous. Without intending to, the United States could become mired in Middle Eastern wars for decades.”

Always he speaks out for the right and the duty of the citizen to know what is going on in the world. It is a stark moral code he holds up for the reader and the reporter alike. The conceit of the powerful is not the reporter’s concern. A good journalist has only one job — to tell the truth.

Cronkite set the standards of television news when the medium was new and malleable. He was loyal to those standards, and his large audience was correspondingly loyal to him. “He seemed to me incorruptible,” said director Sidney Lumet, “in a profession that was easily corruptible.” It was all that Cronkite wanted — and he achieved it.

I have a question. I have done several internet searches on Walter Conkrite and it seems he could do no wrong. However, my father worked in downtown Chicago during the Democratic Convention riots and to this day he is disgusted that Conkrite only reported what the police were doing to the demonstrators, but never what they were doing to the police. So, I’m just curious: did anyone report on BOTH sides?

dennis

we will never have a man like walter cronkite again . i will miss him

outboard66625@verizon.net

god bless you walter! thanks for all your good work!and i will always rember you takeing us to the moon . you are one man that brought the world together . mark s weymouth ma

Larry Pilkinton

Walter Cronkite, the name is timeless, the man always honorable. As the story says, he embodied what journalism should be, must be, for the public to trust what is broadcast over the waves. I grew up with his presence. It is he that most Americans, probably the rest of the world, listened to and believed what was said was the honest truth. For many years, he was America as he was the most recognizable news professional. There may never be another as dedicated as he to providing the coverage necessary to present the daily news in a trustworthy and professional manner, while showing without knowing, his unabashed love of and dedication to the United States of America. His end is near and we that grew up listening to his voice and watching his image with endearing affection for ‘our’ news person, will certainly miss his presence when the time comes. I have no doubt that he and God will become close for eternity as they both want only that Man love everyone and everything. Thanks to Walter Cronkite for his service to not only America, but to the world.

tim Connolly

Walter was a man of integrity. I rarely watch televised news on the major stations anymore. When he retired, so did the objective journalism of his era. Todays news is more info-tainment than substance and who can get the story on first seems to be the norm. Dan Rather was a joke as a broadcaster and The CBS Evening News quickly dropped in the ratings. Rather’s insistence of not having Cronkite around showed his insecurity and had he reached out, may have become a better broadcaster. In any event, men like Walter come once in a life time and I miss the old days of watching both the CBS news with Cronkite and the Huntley-Brinkley report on NBC. That folks was journalism and integrity at its finest in its era.

Alan Coles

The world became a better place when Walter gave us the news. I will never forget his courage in reporting the JFK assasination and how well he kept his composure. He was truly moved to tears and we all knew how he felt and admired him greatly for it. I will miss his objectivity and his gentle nature that our country needed throughout the many crises he covered in his life.

john

how coincidental that the most trusted man in america passes at the same time america’s bigges liar and theif is on his death bed. Walter Cronkite rest in peace you were a great man. Bill Cronin when you die may you rot in hell. You have taken people all of your life and you will get whats coming to you on the other side.

Wanda Fruth

My parents were the same age as Walter Cronkite. What great people they all were. May they all enjoy eternity with God. Walter Cronkite will be sorely missed, just as my parents, Wendell and Gladys Wertz, have been missed. My huge family misses them so very much. One more person of that wonderful generation has passes onto their eternal reward. God bless that generation. May we learn from their wise counsel, and pray that our United States of America come back to God. God Bless America.

Mark Hall

Anne, nice question. Instead of looking for silliness on the internet, I suggest a FOIA request to see how many officers were injured or hospitalized by small groups of heavily armed hippies beating on their heads with sticks. Then compare numbers.

cluger

this is my first post to any comment page like this.
i was raised in his era. i became addicted to history because of “…and you were there”.
it is unfortunate that we will probably not see another prime time journalist of his calibre. the news media business model has changed…far beyond the movie “network” scenario…which looks pretty tame to what has happened in the last decade.
Not much has been written about the programs he has backed since his retirement. Specials, documentaries.

because of his age, we all knew it was coming…but like the death of a local Twin cities (minnesota) icon —news anchor Dave Moore — it comes as a shock…a shock to our own mortality.
He had a great run.

truly distressed and kindest thoughts for his family and friends.

diane

Seriously Anne, what a question. Typical of the Fox News crowd. The man was 92 years old. HOw about a little respect?

Michael Gillum

I’ve missed Uncle Walter for years.
It’s interesting that both Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather were kicked out by CBS because of the Reagan-Bush dynasty.
Mr. Cronkite’s home away from home was indeed United Press, but his spiritural home as you can find him saying in many places was the Episcopal Church.
His service will be at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Thursday. http://www.stbarts.org

Patrick J. Welin

There was so much more…Racial Riots, Chappaquiddick, the assasination of Robert F. Kennedy, Charles Manson, Watergate, and Kent State etc… Either way, not only was family life difficult between 1968 and 1973 with two brothers lost to suicide and the Vietnam War, and a family ripped to shreds by alcoholism, abuse and neglect (between 1st and 5th grade for me), but the news, wars, riots, murders, and government corruption echoed in the backgroung in our living room wherever we lived. We didn’t have cable TV with 100 channels to divert our attention away from what appeared to be a crazy, depressing, oppresive, and corrrupt world. We didn’t have computers, i-pods, and video games to block the broadcasts on our screens—And even though the world was difficult for the six to twelve year olds to understand or comprehend these issues, the tone reflected what was happening in our personal lives. We still saw the death, destruction, corruption, hatred, and oppression whether it was happening on television, or in full live view of our kitchens and living rooms between our parents and siblings. That was my childhood—without explanation, comfort, attention or understanding from any positive guiding adult influence… This is the reality of the human condition… and Walter Cronkite framed the human condition in its context on a global scale. He was another voice without the option to reach for comfort and explanation which fueled my adult stumble and quest to understand myself, humanity, and the world in and on a personal and global level… Thank You Walter for echoing the difficult truths about humanity!

Sean Edenburn

Tonight, there is a tear on the CBS Eye.

Respectfully,
Sean

Stacy

Will this be made available to watch on the PBS website?

There are many sad excuses for PBS stations that refuse to air anything intellectual or thought-provoking, leaving many viewers with no access to real PBS programming other than the website.

D. Newman

Please play the American Masters Walter Cronkite program again. I only saw part of it, since I didn’t know it would be on. Many thanks

S. Block, Montreal

This was certainly among my favourites in the series. I say this because I teach my students the importance of disinterested reporting, something rather rare today. I was therefore hoping that the program could be made available for purchase as I certainly would order a copy for our college library. I also hope this answers Anne’s comment, her not being able to witness Cronkite’s integrity firsthand.

Dion

Was he really that good? I guess with time passed we can now check his accuracy particularly his views of the Vietnam war? I strongly suggest people do. There is overwhelming evidence that he may not have deserved his most trusted man in America badge.

Lolita

To those High School students interested to apply for a scholarship program, ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is offering a summer program open to all High School students in the US of A. If accepted, tuition, board and lodging is free for 2 weeks. I thought this is a great start for all journalism and mass communication lovers. My daughter happens to be one of the twenty lucky candidates accepted for this summer of 2010. Thanks to the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Walter Cronkite’s legacy. You will never be forgotten!

Rosemarie

There is no reason to repeat the facts about a man that can and will never be replaced…There was one man that had the same dedicated honesty.and will always be remember , by me , anyway…Peter Jennings..he had that same honest and total devotion to his place in the news.
We lost a great man when he died, and he was so young.
On our local station, here in Nevada, we have a man of such quality, Tad Dunbar. so there are a few men with
honest integrity…but very few..
As for honest news , but in a different style, we have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh…and the great station of
FOX NEWS….
However, none shall replace or be remembered like Walter Cronkite.

fm radio stations in Vermont

Please play the American Masters Walter Cronkite program again. I only saw part of it, since I didn’t know it would be on. Many thanks

Steven

I with the last post… Play American Masters Walter Cronkite again or at least email us when it will air again. Please!

John

Cronkite was a disgrace responsible for the shift from reporting the news to reporting political opinions(all liberal except for FOX news, which is no better) disguised as facts. Fortunately the public did not let Dan Rather get away with it. Bye-Bye Dan. Perhaps Leslie Clarke’s next noble effort will be to laud Dan Rather’s great contribution to history.

Michael’s Side

I will always remember the man who talked us through some to fhe most famous moments in our history.
Whether opinions are good or bad, Walter Cronkite told the story the way it was so that we could, “See It Now.”

Corinne Cronkite

Cheer up people. Walter Cronkite’s grandson just joined CBS and he earned his way there. I should know not only am I related to them, but a huge fan as well. Please welcome Walter Cronkite the fourth with open hearts and minds. Also my beloved brother Ronald D. Cronkite passed away five months before Walter in 2009 and he now has a new grandson Ronald D. Cronkite the third. R.I.P. Ronald D. Cronkite 1959-2009 and Walter L.Cronkite 1916-2009

Last Spartan

we are all sorry for the loss of walter. he will be dearly missed

B Wyatt

Truly touching man.

james wheat

I too grew up with walt, the one man I believed always. I watched the the 1968 convention with my parents. Knowing that such a man held the police to a higher standard that college kids gave me respect for all america. still does. the Closest we have now I think is Anderson Cooper, I think Cronkite would approve of him. just watched the last night of the 2012 RNP convention and wished Cronkite would help me make sense of it. I’m only 52 and cant wrap my head around it or why reasonable mature people didn’t get up and walk out. Of course had Cronkite been there maybe a sense of shame would have prevented such smart people from saying such stupid things. (Palin excepted)
James S. Wheat
R.I.P. old freind

Brian O.

Walter Cronkite had that calm demeanor in him and that’s who I think of when it came to Peter Jennings. They both were able to calmly deliver the news to the millions at no matter how extreme or how cataclysmic it may be. R.I.P. to both of them. I was too young for Walter but I grew up watchingPeter Jennings he was my guy and a little Tom Brokaw. Dan Rather wasn’t really my guy but I respected him as much as the next man. Brian Williams is the guy right now for NBC’s Nightly News he’s Brokaw’s replacement but he will NEVER be Brokaw. From WWII, Korea, the Civil Rights Movement & Vietnam to the assassinations of JFK & MLK to announcing the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Elvis & John Lennon Walter was and always will be ” The Most Trusted Man in America”. I say “The Most Trusted Man in the World” because of his international regonition. Walter along with Ted Kennedy were both still living when Obama got inaugurated back in 2009 months before they both died that summer I betcha they were both proud as I was and everybody else. Now that I’m much older I’ve seen your work Walter and damn you’re the best. Even though Jennings is my favorite of all time you were the first to deliver world-making history with fine elegance and percision. Godspeed.

American Masters Funding

American Masters is made possible by the support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, Rhoda Herrick, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Vital Projects Fund, Jack Rudin, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.